Lux
by Saoirse Mooney
Summary: Who is Ed? What is he, that you'll not bear to lose him?


Filmverse. Set during _Prince Caspian_ , this deals with Caspian's attempts to define exactly what part Edmund plays in his life and how he's becoming more reliant on Edmund's presence than is perhaps wise. In some ways this could be seen as a companion piece, of sorts, to _And Light Shines In Darkness_. _Lux_ is Latin, and translates as 'light'. As always, any characters you recognise here belong to C. S. Lewis.

* * *

You're a king, but that is not all you are. You are also a human being, and a man who has been empty for a long time; Ed gives you hope for the future, something you thought you'd lost for ever, and that's only one of many things you love about him. He'll end up back in his own world, whatever the length of his stay here, and you know it. But even knowing you cannot keep him is not enough to stop you.

You remember well enough how, for a long time, life for you has meant little other than existing. This has been even more an issue, of late, especially after the failure of the siege at your Uncle's castle and the knowledge that people who had trusted you were dead because of it. You would love to say they were the only ones who would die for you, but you will not hold your breath for that. Fate seems to have a nasty habit of playing its tricks on you, and you've seen too much to be _naïf_ enough to believe the worst is behind you.

But if Fate has been ungentle with you when you got in its way, and the guilt over the results of your actions weighs you down, Ed has been a balm to shredded nerves and anxiety. Each night you make love to him, the man you're besotted with, and afterwards you lie wrapped around each other chasing away your nightmares until you can let your walls down enough to be lulled into fitful sleep.

You dream of Ed.

It's always Ed; he's the light that lightens the choking darkness from your nightmares that threatens you, the lantern-lamp to banish its shadows into oblivion, and the salve for your troubled soul. You suspect he helps you be better than you are alone.

Your feelings for him deepen over time; you adore him, and even that word, one of the strongest you know for lovers' use, is not enough to contain the strength of those feelings. Language has its limitations, you are finding, and even the best similes and metaphors you know don't encapsulate what Ed is, and is becoming, to you. You're unsurprised; you've had little prior reason to describe your emotions.

What _is_ Ed to you, anyhow?

The answers whisper through your mind in a litany of feeling: Companion. Lover. King. _Beloved_.

You never speak these words aloud, trapped in the superstition that to give voice to these thoughts is to lose him. This is the one thing you don't want to think about, because you know (he is but a visitor to Narnia, after all) one day it will happen. Neither do you (or, indeed, anyone) speak of the time he saved you, and all of Narnia, from the _stinking_ Witch. The image branded on your brain, of Ed breaking the spell the Witch had woven over you and his brother, is an indictment of your cowardice and an awed salutation to Ed's courage.

Never raising the topic of the Witch with him means you have no idea what Ed thinks about it; much of this is because you are ashamed of your behaviour that day. It isn't the healthiest way to approach a relationship, you suspect, but when you fall head-over-heels in love with someone and don't know how long you will have with them the health of your relationship isn't your highest priority. Instead, you let yourselves enjoy each other, giving Ed everything and holding nothing of yourself back because you don't know how to do such a thing and you are almost certain you wouldn't want to even if you did.

You spend your nights lost in him, in both heart and body; and would do it again without question. The longer he stays with you, and the further in love with him you fall, the more it'll hurt when the separation you're dreading comes. And none of this will help you give Narnia an heir. Yet none of it stops you hoping Aslan will let you keep Ed in your life for the longer term.

Because it's becoming clear you cannot, _will_ not, give him up.


End file.
